1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document processing apparatus and method suitable for document management for binding and managing a plurality of documents into one document.
2. Description of the Related Art
A document management apparatus that can bind a plurality of documents (hereinafter original documents) to create one document (hereinafter a binder document) or add a new document to such a binder document has been proposed. In creating or updating this binder document, the ordering of original documents within the new binder document is generally made according to the order of the date or name of the document. Also, it has been proposed that the user specifies the ordering of documents in performing an operation of binding the documents. Also, a character written at a specific position of the document such as the page number may be recognized, employing a character recognition technique, and the documents may be bound in its order (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 07-168849).
On the other hand, there is a demand for restricting copying or prohibiting printing depending on the original document. Thus, whether or not a process for the document is performed is determined by setting the access right for each document. In this case, there is a restriction on each binder document consisting of a plurality of documents (in a unit of binder document), because the binder document is treated as one document.
However, with the prior art described above, in binding a plurality of original documents to create one binder document or adding a new original document to the binder document, the user was required to make an operation to put the ordering of the original documents into the desired ordering, which took a lot of trouble. At this time, the user might make an incorrect operation such as a mistake in specifying the ordering, possibly impeding the later document operation or application. In a constitution as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 07-168849, the ordering is automatically decided, but it is required to make aware of the position of original document in the binder document in creating each original document, because of assigning the page number. Also, in a constitution as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 07-168849, it is not possible to meet a request for binding one original document at the top in a certain binder, and at the end of another binder.
Also, even if the copy or print of the document was restricted by setting the access right, it was not possible to make the access restriction on each of the original documents making up the binder document, because the binder document itself is one document. And since setting the access right is a function/management method set up according to the user registered in a system for managing the document, it greatly depends on the system to be operated. For example, every time the document was registered in another document management system, it was necessary to set the access right according to that particular system, which was not an efficient process and had poor universality.
Also, there is a case where the original document may be left behind and added to the binder document. In this case, when the user edits and updates the original document, an update operation for the binder document is needed. If this update operation is neglected, the document information added to the binder document is not updated, making it impossible to manage the latest information.